On Learning
Just a few months back I was sitting with my now six-year-old son, reviewing sight words and becoming increasingly irritated by the fact that he couldn’t recognize the word “this”—the word that we just spent the past five minutes talking about. I held up the flashcard and he glanced at it and shouted “OF”—HOW COULD THIS POSSILBY BE “OF”! I lost it. I hit my limit of patience and mean mommy emerged. “How could this possibly say “OF” Hudson, it isn’t even the same letters!” I shouted. Hudson burst into tears immediately and I quickly took a deep breath and gave him a hug. “It’s okay honey, you will get it.”
Sometimes things don’t happen how we wish they would. Or on our timeline. That’s life. We make plans and one by one they fall apart. The trip that never happens. The phone call that’s never placed. The class that suddenly gets sent back home because someone tested positive for COVID. We are all just doing our best with the best of intentions. That’s all we can do. As a mom I have to remind myself of this daily.
I think I find myself so stressed out about my younger son and his education because he reminds me of myself at his age…and it terrifies me. In kindergarten my head was in the clouds. I had a wild imagination but that was about the only thing I had going for me it seemed. I thought the ABCs were just a song we would sing- I didn’t realize we actually needed to learn the alphabet to be able to write and read. And I didn’t realize how failing to be a good strong reader early on would affect every other subject to follow and so many aspects of my life in the years to come. It was a domino effect that led to me being a C student and feeling like an F student. It led to low self-esteem. It led to me bombing my SATs and it led me to lots of disappointment when it came time to graduate and go off to college.
I wish someone had told me that every choice I made in those early years would have consequences. But as a child I very much lived in the moment, day-to-day, not worried about my future self. As a child I made it my job to be invisible in class, never called on by teachers (or I would die of embarrassment), but liked by all of them just enough to slide by unquestioned. I was a master at appearing busy and pensive and somehow managed to skip classes daily in high school (usually with a yearbook staff hall pass) without a teacher ever raising an eye brow. And extra credit assignments and group projects were my saving grace…little did I know that the joke was on me.
It took a rejection letter to the University of Florida for me to realize that I should have tried harder. I remember crying to Joe (my boyfriend at the time and now husband) telling him I didn’t get in, knowing he did, as did all of our friends at the time (what was a “safety school” for most of them was a long-shot for me). I knew at the time they deserved to get in and that I certainly didn’t, but boy did it sting.
I was smart, though. Maybe not academically but I was intelligent in many ways and I knew it deep down inside. I surrounded myself with the kids that got into Harvard, Vanderbilt, Yale, Brown and UF. I was one of them. I was actually the ring leader of them. I attribute my “sliding by” in high school to my association with them (half of the debate team) and with my older sister who was also an “A student”.
“We are all still learning, no matter our age. We are all still in the process of becoming, until our last breath. There is no fast forward button to achievement (as much as our children might think there is). We all learn at our own speed, in our own way, in our own time. I want my children to understand and accept that achievement can only be experienced if we try for it, just as our every success can only be felt if it is earned. ”
It wasn’t until my freshman year at UCF that I got serious about school. My goal was clear- I was going to get into UF, even if it took two years of Gen Ed to get there. It was going to happen.
I read books from start to finish for the FIRST time EVER that year. I learned HOW to study and I learned that studying ACTUALLY works. I started to pass tests, with A’s. I found out that learning can be super interesting and dare I say fun. I learned that I don’t suck at math. And when it came time to select a major I picked English, confident that I could excel at it. And I did.
I drown myself in both literature and writing courses. I moved from UCF to Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville for my sophomore year. I went from being an extremely depressed freshman to feeling like I was on top of the world just by changing my environment and being reunited with Joe. Then going into my junior year, I got my acceptance letter to UF. I made it happen. I discovered my true love for creative writing. I discovered that I was actually good at something when my professors would choose my writings to share with the whole class as an example of what they were looking for with each new assignment. I became a dork. I welcomed this new title. I graduated from UF with honors and to this day I will proudly say that graduating from college is by far my biggest accomplishment.
We are all still learning, no matter our age. We are all still in the process of becoming, until our last breath. There is no fast forward button to achievement (as much as our children might think there is). We all learn at our own speed, in our own way, in our own time. I want my children to understand and accept that achievement can only be experienced if we try for it, just as our every success can only be felt if it is earned. I remember my grandfather Pop telling me repeatedly whenever I would get frustrated or discouraged, “it doesn’t matter if you come in first or if you come in last—what matters is that you gave it your all”. I now say this to both of my children all the time. There is no rush—learning isn’t a race, take your time with it and try your best. I can never get upset with you if you are honestly trying.
I learned to let go of fixating on grades. I learned to let go of the status and accumulation of their reading tags for their school’s AR program. I learned to let go of wanting their school projects to be perfect. Instead I focus on the try. If they show me a C on a math test they took, I ask if they tried their best and review the material with them. If they tell me their friend went “over the rainbow” with AR and they only made it halfway that quarter, I remind them that I value their love for reading over the speed at which they finish each book. If they bring home a form outlining an upcoming school project I don’t get involved. I let them choose what they wish to create for it and how they plan to execute it. If they ask me for my help with homework I will gladly steer them in the right direction but as soon as they demonstrate that they understand the concept I remove myself from the equation. I want them to know that when they earn a grade it’s because of what THEY did, not what anyone else did for them.
I cleaned out old boxes in my parents’ garage not long ago and you can imagine my level of surprise when I discovered a diagnostic test from elementary school with scores well above average. I thought they must belong to Lori—she was the smart one—but no, they had my name printed on them. Who knew? I sure as hell never did! In that moment I decided that I want my children to know that they are both smart and capable. I want them both to feel that they are smart and capable. And I want to raise them with a belief system that their minds are amazing muscles that are capable of SO much more than we can even imagine today.
Fast forward a few months- I am now in the kitchen with Hudson. We are reviewing his sight words for his test this Friday. I hold up flashcard after flashcard and he rattles each word off like it’s nothing. Like he has been reading for years. He tells me they are “easy” and to give him harder ones. A light bulb went off for him recently and all of a sudden, he is a reader—a good reader! I could cry. Patience pays off!
As a parent we all want the best for our children. We want them to have things we perhaps never had. Go places we never went. Experience things we never were able to experience. I don’t know what the future holds for my boys. I don’t know where they will go post high school or what careers they will choose to take on. I want to live in the now with them but I also refuse to be short-sighted about what’s to come. All I know is that we are working TODAY to ensure that they will have an array of choices when they enter the “real world”. Wherever they choose to fly to is entirely up to them—I just want to help them grow strong enough wings to carry them there, with confidence in their ability to fly. Knowing the sky is the limit.